What do you want to be when you grow up?
How to think about your career path as a UXer at Shopify
Near the end of 2018, Shopify introduced a formal job levels framework that set forth two parallel growth tracks: the individual contributor (IC) track, also known as the staff track, and the manager track. Prior to that point, Shopify did have a loosely defined “technical” track to complement the better-established manager track, but there had always been questions around what that role entailed and what a long-term career trajectory in that direction might look like. For example, could someone on the technical track one day become a director? And if they did, would they by definition have to take on direct reports?
The new framework aimed to answer these questions, and make the two growth tracks truly parallel and equivalent: after becoming senior individual contributors, Shopifolk could opt to continue their careers along that track, or branch off to the manager track. Job levels would be clearly defined at every rung along those paths, and though the responsibilities at each of those rungs would look a little different, impact on the business would be comparable, and salary expectations identical.
However, even with the staff track being newly formalized, there were very few examples at that point of people actually performing that role. And so, in an attempt to make better sense of it, folks began (perhaps inconsistently) articulating the main difference between the two tracks as the presence of direct reports: if you’re a manager, they said, you have people reporting directly to you. But if you’re a staff crafter, you don’t, and you also probably work directly on projects yourself. Simple enough, it seemed. But was it?
Looking around a year after the introduction of the framework, we saw examples of staff roles who had more reports than some managers. We saw managers working directly on high complexity, cross-functional projects. What’s more, while some managers went on to become generalists leading multidisciplinary teams of direct reports (i.e., UX managers), other “craft managers” maintained their discipline specialization, with only direct reports from their own discipline (e.g. UX research managers, UX development managers, etc.). And while both those roles have much in common, sitting side-by-side on the manager track, craft managers and staff crafters also tend to have many shared responsibilities, particularly when it comes to leading their specific discipline.
So, what’s really in a job title anyway?
When comparing parallel rungs on the two career tracks, the truth is: not as much as you’d think.
Titles are helpful in that they provide some signposts along one’s growth path. But they can be more effective when looked at as fluid or malleable, as guardrails rather than rigid constraints. Our job levels framework was deliberately written to reflect a set of non-exhaustive, high-level examples of what you might want to take on within a particular level of impact (e.g., “Knows when to apply best practices and tools, and knows when to improve them.”). They were not designed to be prescriptive lists of detailed output at that level. (e.g., “Knows how to use tool X at intermediate level and produces Y number of artifacts a month using it.”)
So, rather than consider the primary difference between a manager (whether specialist or generalist) and a staff role as whether one takes on direct reports, let’s instead look at where a given role may sit along (at the very least) three variables: people, discipline, and product.
While they may strive to strike a balance of all three, at any given time in their careers people are more likely to focus on two of them more than the third (and that’s not to say that the third falls entirely out of their purview, but perhaps just becomes more comparatively out of focus). Let’s look at where managers and staff may land through that lens:
These are just a few examples of how people in those roles may structure their responsibilities. If we further think of the staff and manager roles less like endpoints, and more as a spectrum, we can further map individual interpretations of those roles in a even more nuanced way:
So with all those possibilities, how can you tell what’s right for you?
Driving your own growth conversation
With so many nuances and variations, it can become overwhelming to figure out not only where you sit, but also where you’d like to be. To complicate things further, sometimes people have niche skills or teams have highly specific needs that aren’t explicitly reflected within the official job levels framework.
The reality is that we actually have far more say in shaping our roles than we think. At Shopify, impact is more contingent on adherence to a set of values rather than ticking off checklists, and many of those values promote autonomy: Build for the long-term. Thrive on change. Be a constant learner. So, to borrow inspiration from the concept of ikigai, the roles we craft for ourselves would, even should, sit at the intersection of: how we’re interested in growing (not just as workers, but also as humans); what we’re good at or enjoy; and what our teams actually need.
Below is just one example (in this case, for UX researchers) of how you could use such a framework to decide which role you might lean towards the most. The answer to some of the questions were deliberately chosen to be the same, in order to show that, regardless of title, different roles have a lot more in common than we might think:
These aren’t one-way paths
At Shopify, we sometimes refer to careers as “jungle gyms”, and encourage moving across teams, product lines, disciplines, or roles. And yet, one of the most common concerns we hear when discussing career interests with individual contributors is the perception that, if they decide to go down the management track, they will remain there, well, forever. We’ve grown up with the idea of “career managers”, or folks who remain on the management ladder until retirement. And while that is an absolutely fine, if not aspirational, path for many people, others balk at that type of commitment.
It’s perhaps more helpful to think of management as a craft, rather than a career, one that entices you to build a new set of skills to add to your toolbox. Amongst many things, being a manager requires you to learn how to listen better. It requires you to have difficult conversations. It requires you to make decisions that take into account both the humans and the business, to manage performance, give feedback, and design teams. And when you look at those as standalone skills, they are all qualities one might aspire to develop, regardless of role, discipline, or long-term growth plans.
So even if you don’t necessarily want to be a manager for the rest of your life, given the opportunity to try it, we recommend exploring the option of taking on direct reports, or even approaching management as a time-boxed skill-building opportunity. There is absolutely nothing to say you can’t jump back to an individual contributor growth path should you choose to do so down the line.
So now what?
You might’ve noticed this piece deliberately refrains from providing an exact formula for how your career should unfold. And that’s because no two paths are the same, nor should they be: people have different strengths and aspirations, and teams have different needs and objectives. It’s impossible to make them all fit in a rigid structure that does away with nuances and individuality. But, by coupling a well-defined job level framework with guidance on how to interpret and tailor it to specific situations, you can have more autonomy and ownership over the decisions that shape a huge proportion of their lives. So use both to start the conversation, have it early and have it often, and carve your own unique path through this thing called UX.
